NASCAR’S Wild Years: Stock Car Technology in the 1960s offers a comprehensive look at stock car racing in the era when the cars mattered as much as, or more than, the celebrity drivers.

Before retailing giants, snack food makers and pharmaceutical companies bought and sold stock car racing, there were just surly guys in scant safety gear driving heavily modified factory-backed, high-performance automobiles.NASCAR’S Wild Years: Stock Car Technology in the 1960s by Alex Gabbard recounts stock car racing’s pre-multimedia endorsement deal days–a time when the brand of car that won races was more important to fans than the brand name written across the front of a driver’s fire suit.
Despite its title, the book starts in the 1950s and ends, fittingly, with a photo of an orange Hemi-powered 1970 Plymouth Superbird–the ultimate example of the lengths auto manufacturers went to in the name of dominating NASCAR’s superspeedways. In between are dozens of great pictures and a straightforward retelling of the names, places and of course the cars that shaped America’s hottest form of motorsport.
With Speedweeks kicking off this weekend it’s nice to remember a time when stock car racing was a reflection of what American auto manufacturers were producing rather than just another component of some multi-national conglomerate’s marketing strategy.
Check it out at Car Tech’s Web site.

(This post originally appeared in the February 9, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)